


Flux

by tigerpiidge



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: AU hopping, Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 10:12:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16195436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerpiidge/pseuds/tigerpiidge
Summary: Yuuri, starting at 23, could traverse the multiverse. He hops into so many different lives that he loses track of his own reality until he turns 24 and he’s back to his original universe. He hops when he gets drunk and kisses people.Wherein Yuuri gets reckless sometimes and because he universe hops he doesn’t have to deal with consequences but now he pole danced with Christophe Giacometti and propositioned Viktor Nikiforov and the Universe wants to see him suffer.It worked. Yuuri is suffering™.





	Flux

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to middledumpling and sidneycarson. I would be ded without you.

**Summary:** Yuuri, starting at 23, could traverse the multiverse. He hops into so many different lives that he loses track of his own reality until he turns 24 and he’s back to his original universe. He hops when he gets drunk and kisses people.

Wherein Yuuri gets reckless sometimes and because he universe hops he doesn’t have to deal with consequences but now he pole danced with Christophe Giacometti and propositioned Viktor Nikiforov and the Universe wants to see him suffer.

It worked. Yuuri is suffering™.

-

Chapter One

Yuuri wakes to loud music. Obnoxious with poor sound quality. Everything feels raw — like he’s been stretched out and wrung far beyond the threshold of his all too human bones. Perhaps he should be grateful that he wasn’t retching. Instead, Yuuri’s nose was cold.

Rubbing his eyes, he grabbed his glasses off the side table. The movement sends pain ratcheting up his arm. It’s unbearable. Yuuri drops his glasses with a groan. Grits his teeth.

Soft light filters in but the brightness feels nothing short of searing. It lays him out, making his unfamiliar room sterile and depressingly familiar. Cold lights, cold nose, and a reverie of something (someone?) lost.

He feels vulnerable, like a newborn baby taking his first breaths. Frightened by the world’s great intensity without the faculties to fully perceive it.

Deep breath in and Yuuri ignores the warning twinges in his back to grab his old, blue glasses.

His aching joints set off alarm bells. Unsticking himself from his sheets, Yuuri wobbles to his feet. His ankle threatens to give out but Yuuri focuses on compartmentalization, reminding himself of other pain, stinging ice, and flowering bruises. He’s a college athlete -- this weird hangover is nothing.

He claws in air, fumbling his way upright. But his bed is much nicer despite its homely sinkhole center. When he finally manages to get vertical, his eyes widen and he falls back.

He stays down.

Woozy from the pain in his head, Yuuri’s panic-prone heart beats overtime. The influx of oxygen drives his adrenaline way up but Yuuri remains depressingly stagnant, frozen.

Standing up, while a Sisyphean task, illumines him, providing a better scope of his painfully unfamiliar surroundings. The bed smelled, sagged, and sounded like his own but Yuuri sees the Nike motivational posters in place of his dashing Viktor Nikiforov.

Yuuri’s Nikiforov Problem (as Mari calls it) is an embarrassing staple of his sad existence. As ridiculous as it is, Yuuri would never betray Viktor by plastering some Nike promo over his limited edition, fan reprint of Viktor’s 2006 Olympic win. The very thought tastes blasphemous. Yuuri is painfully aware what a fanboy he is but he is also painfully aware that he is. Not. in. his. Apartment.

The bed frame and bedding is foreign even if the Yuuri-sized sinkhole is not. Yuuri clutches at his head, trying to remember the last thing he did. How did he get here?

Yesterday was his birthday. Pichit threw him a surprise party. Danny, the Physics major Yuuri had been seeing on and off for the past year was there (but Danny was, Yuuri remembered with a grimace, preoccupied on Yuuri’s pull-out sofa with his new girlfriend).  _ What an ass _ .

The room around him still wasn’t Danny’s and Yuuri was fully clothed.

Small mercies. However, that didn’t solve Yuuri’s problem: he was still alone (hopefully) in someone else’s house. Damn.

Not for the first time in his life, Yuuri curses his genetics and propensity for alcohol. It was so easy to forgo consequences with liquor. Thanks to Yuuri With A Wild Side, Morning Hangover Yuuri was paying for it. Yuuri curses Danny for good measure, albeit halfheartedly. Not all of Yuuri’s poor decisions should be dumped on handsome (but ultimately straight or bi?) Physics majors.

No, this mess is Yuuri’s own. A patented Katsuki screw-up.

The ache and the raw prickling of Yuuri’s skin send shivers down his spine. Yuuri had been hungover plenty of times in college and something about the tugging in Yuuri’s chest felt off. Something is off and very, very wrong.

Yuuri feels vulnerable and out of step with his actions.

The sickly blue walls with stupid motivational posters pen him in and Yuuri’s starting to feel panic rising in his throat. He has to leave the room. Mustering all his self-control, Yuuri staggers to his feet and bursts out of the oppressive room.

But the next room only confuses him further. Sinking down onto the floor, Yuuri’s head swivels, still pounding but taking in details. Sparsely furnished, the main living area he enters has his stuff in it. Weird. So unbelievably twisted. Maybe, Yuuri hopes, this entire experience is just a really bad high. He’s never trusted the dubiously cut weed and pot the swimming students liked to ply out during the off-season. Unlikely, but maybe Yuuri With A Wild Side decided to get a little risque last night, taking up Tanner Chan, Swimmer and Marijuana Affectionado, on his yearly end-of-season party offer.

Yuuri almost believes it’s the apartment he shares with Phichit when he recognizes the Sports Day medal he got as a freshman hanging on the wall next to Pichit's framed Multivariable Mathematics award.

Traditionally, In their apartment, they mount their awards on a shared corkboard of “fame”. A decidedly dorky name Phichit couldn’t claim full responsibility for. It’s slightly off-kilter and neither of them are particularly talented at decorating. The comfortable but ugly, brown couch that Yuuri leans his back against (straight out of Yuuri’s apartment) testifies to that.

Everything feels right yet slightly  _ off. Wrong _ in an intrinsic and inexplicable way.

This room is still not his apartment.

But it did have pictures of Yuuri.

Creepy to the max.

Upon further examination, Yuuri’s blurry eyes caught the differences between photo-Yuuri and himself. The Yuuri in the pictures looked buffer as if someone had taken a tire pump and filled up all Yuuri’s fat into toned logs.

The entire affair was captivating. Focusing on the frames lining the wall opposite him, Yuuri couldn’t look away.

Buff Photo Yuuri with his arm around Phichit, laughing as they pose by a bench press. Another Yuuri taking shots at a bar wearing a flannel shirt. A younger Yuuri next to Mari and Vicchan. That one must have been taken back in Japan. All the Yuuris looked happy but Yuuri was starting to notice a trend. Yuuri had the same smile in every photo… too similar and rehearsed.

Where these photos photoshopped? Was he on a celebrity prank show? Was this all a twisted, elaborate Happy Birthday gift?

Yuuri could have spent the entire day marveling at the weird apartments photos. They made him nostalgic and inexplicably sad. Did Yuuri ever look like picture Yuuri?

Yuuri never got his answer. Instead, someone was unlocking the apartment door. Scrambling, Yuuri grabs the first thing he sees to defend himself. It’s a bamboo back-scratcher. Yuuri can usually make things work but he tosses the stick to the side.

Yuuri had just grabbed hold of a stray beer bottle when Phichit burst through the door.

Eves wide and winded with stress, Phichit was not as Yuuri remembered. Even buffer than buff photo-Yuuri, Phichit had muscles that sat on other muscles.

It was not an unattractive look.

“Where have you been!” Phichit wheezed.

You’d think, with his massive arms, the guy could take a little cardio without panting and clinging to the door frame. Phichit motioned frantically for Yuuri to follow.

Yuuri did so in a daze. Even oddly muscular, Phichit was the most normal thing Yuuri had seen so he followed.

The nausea Yuuri felt before seemingly receded to a more manageable thumping headache. Climbing down three sets of staircases, he listened as Phichit rambled. “Yuuri you missed your shift! Chao-Chao got so pissed! If we don’t get back before your second session than you’re foreshore getting fired!”

Yuuri took all the information in and let it settle.

“And what happened to you? You look like death?”

“Are you sick?”

“I cannot believe you left the party with Dan again. You know he’s basically straight…”

“Run faster! We’re still late you know!”

On a scale from aware to totally confused, Yuuri was ten million times confused. Phichit’s random chattering didn’t help his headache.

“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” Yuuri asked, grabbing Phichit by the shoulder and stopping his huge friend.

Yuuri’s knees quake.

“You’re late” Phichit deadpanned.

“No, no I mean…” Yuuri trails off and wants to scream. Based on Phichit's blank expression, Phichit didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.

Sensing his friend's internal turmoil, Phichit hurried expression softens into something that looks like empathy. “I know last night was rough but chin up. Just keep swimming!” Phichit makes a wigging move that Yuuri assumes is a fish imitation.

He manages a smile. He’s sure he looks as defeated as photo-Yuuri. But it seems to do the trick and Phichit is dragging him along once more.

***

They arrive at a gym. Yuuri doesn’t know why he’s surprised. With Photo-Yuuri’s arms, Yuuri assumes his doppelganger must have had constant access to protein shakes and salmon ladders.

Phichit shuffles Yuuri inside. Before he knows what’s happening, Yuuri’s shirt is off and he’s facing a bunch of people. The room he’s in is outfitted with speakers in every corner and rows and rows of stationary bikes. Yuuri is not so introverted that he’s never been to a joy ride before. But never had Yuuri had to be the instructor.

Shaking, Yuuri resolves to get to the end of this mystery. Perhaps this was all just a dream and Yuuri just have to finish it out. Jumping on a bike, he prepares to lose himself to the workout.

Exercise is Yuuri’s preferred method of procrastination.

Still nervous and hurting, Yuuri does his best to go with the flow and improvise. He tells the crowd to get on the stationary bikes and they follow.

Once on the bike, Yuuri has a moment to see himself in the mirror for the first time since waking up. The experience is so surreal and Yuuri’s stomach flips.

Yuuri, for all intents and purposes, looks exactly like Photo-Yuuri. He tries not to make a scene of groping at his arms and chest but he catches the skeeved outlooks of some of his students.

Clearing his throat, Yuuri begins the class. His brain picks out the right things to say and his body moves on muscle memory.

He yells out broad statements and inane sayings, shouting how they should reach their goals and push themselves.

At the end of the session, Yuuri’s harms and legs hurt and his voice is hoarse.

Phichit questions him later why he didn’t use the microphone. Yuuri doesn’t have an answer.

**

It’s two weeks later that Yuuri starts noticing Phichit  _ noticing _ .

The dream still has not ended and in efforts to avoid sounding conceited, Yuuri kept his suspicions to himself. But if he happens to be watching Phichit when the man slaunters by, bare powerful shoulders on display, that’s not his fault.

The classes become his routine and Yuuri’s body aches eventually fade away. Within a week, Yuuri starts to feel as if he’s never been anyone else like he wasn’t a Japanese figure skater on scholarship. Instead, he’s YK, Boston native whose parents were first-generation immigrants. It’s so easy to lose himself to the new reality, especially when words and memories just well up inside Yuuri, waiting to be said on the tip of his tongue.

So when Phichit offers him the fourth beer after work, Yuuri forgets about the smaller Phichit in Detroit who is very much straight with a cage of outrageously cute hamsters. He lets his eyes trace up Pichit’s profile and appreciate his newfound attention.

Detroit Phichit begins to make less and less sense in Yuuri’s scrambled head.

\---

Yuuri’s not keeping great track of the days that pass him by since his reality shift so he marks the changes instead by the aches in his thighs, in his voice, and by how many ounces of juiced vegetables he consumes.

Stripping off his shirt after work, he finds a very familiar figure in an unfamiliar but depressing heap on the floor. Discarding his shirt into the laundry basket, Yuuri rushes to Phichit side.

After some petting and a couple wet kisses, Yuuri knows two things. Phichit, SoulCycle extraordinaire, is also an aspiring actor. Phichit also just lost out on a big casting role. Yuuri can only hope that the Yuuri Phichit knew before Yuuri swapped into his body didn’t know anything about how acting auditions work.

Tracing long lines down Phichit’s side, Yuuri lets the younger man explain his passion.

Acting, was, apparently what Phichit was born to do. From the small stage in Thailand to his life in America, Phicht had been perfecting his American accent, working to keep the honey and beautiful curves of his natural Thai out of his voice, eviscerating any traces of them. Even in a crumpled heap on the floor, Phichit clears his throat and Yuuri flinches at how clear his English rolls out. It feels so stripped and artificial while completely Phichit.

Americans, Phichit points out, don't want their golden screens to be anything else than a carefully calculated facsimile of their ideal population. A token minority here and there to benefit the main character. People like Phichit were relegated to villainy and Silent Type boy guards.

No one likes breaking tropes, not really; only creating new ones. And so Phichit hasn’t told anyone because he knew that they’d all laugh because it’s stupid, really to expect anything more of such a cannibalizing industry.

And Yuuri can’t breathe for a second. All week (all month?) he’s been trying to fit into a role preordained for him. One carved by a Yuuri past who build up his endurance and muscles. One who liked rom-coms and had a dresser drawer full of antidepressants.

He takes his pills as ordered by his color-coded day storage container and tries to follow Phichit’s lead at work. But the utter destruction of his best friend has Yuuri toe-ing that courtesy line he drew in the sand for Buff Yuuri.

One thing Yuuri can never stand is to see his friends in pain. His heart hurts for it and so he deviates from his norm. He can’t move Phichit, the man is too heavy, to stubbornly sad.

So instead he sits, he pushes Phichit’s papers and head-shots to the side, running his fingers through his dark hair, promising the future. Eventually, as the floor loses the golden gleaming reflection of the sun and Phichit finds the floor stale and his bed more inviting, Yuuri moves the cheer-up session to the sofa.

Phichit was in the shower when Yuuri’s altruism peaks.

Phichit’s fresh out of the water, foggy eyes with red-rims from crying when Yuuri assaults him, convincing him that he has an ally in Yuuri. I don’t think you’re dumb, not at all. I’ll help you rehearse your lines, I’ll support you. I will support you. I’m in your corner.

And Yuuri hugs him tight because this Phichit is so like Detroit Phichit except for this time Yuuri is on the giving end, paying back an eternity of debts where Phichit one had to listen to all Yuuri’s insecurities and doubts (or whichever ones Phichit could eak out of Yuuri).

And so Yuuri finds his place, fitting into the puzzle of their lives. A friend, a supporter, a shoulder. He stops ghosting hands over Phichit’s legs and thighs and arms because what does Yuuri know about seduction, honestly.

He’d just make things awkward. But helping is something Yuuri understands intimately. Anything to keep his best friend off the floor and pieced together like a human and not a heap.

So they run lines. Yuuri helps Phichit find auditions in his off hours and even during work, scrolling through news sites and calling potential people in the breakroom. He packs Phichit off with a veggie juice and his portfolio of photos to every audition.

And one day (Yuuri still doesn’t keep track of his days since popping into this universe), maybe a year or two older, Phichit has a role. A small indie company wants to remake the “King and I”.

They’re having a beer after the call and Yuuri doesn’t remember being happier. Phichit notices. Sleepy smiles again, a little drowsy but still ecstatic. You’re happier, you know. I could - can always tell when you fake it. Phichit says this seriously and even a little drunk, Yuuri knows better than to laugh it off.

This isn’t casual and for not the first time since the switch, Yuuri feels more known than in his own body.

I know, he admits quietly.

And then he looks up to meet Phichit neverending galaxy of dark brown and thinks yes.

It’s butterflies in his stomach when Phichit pulls him closer and their lips tentatively meet.

Yes, Yuuri thinks again but the fluttering in his stomach does not subside, only gets worse. Yuuri tries to ignore it and his eyes follow the strong mold of Phichit’s lips. He licks them first before staking his claim.

Maybe he was a little (very) drunk but the tugging in his gut hit a record high. He’s thinking yes, yes, yes, and success, and happy. But achingly familiar pain hits like a jackhammer at his skill.

Yuuri is pulled backward and Phichit and his hot backside and strong features fall away.

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy, this is my first (relatively) long fic so I am excited to say the least. Drop a review on your way out to make my day!


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